A male-only shortlist for this year's John Llewellyn Rhys prize sees a narrative poem competing with The White Tiger, winner of this year's Booker prize, and three non-fiction books to take the £5,000 cheque.

Poet Adam Foulds, shortlisted for his reimagining of the Kenyan Mau Mau uprising, The Broken Word, said he was delighted to be shortlisted on what was "clearly a very strong list". "It looks to me like the list has a certain kind of vigour, of originality, about all of the books on it," he added. "There seems to be a particular inventive energy there that crosses genre, that to some extent is about going after the subject matter in the most vivid and direct way."

He is shortlisted alongside Aravind Adiga's debut, The White Tiger, and another first novel, Ross Raisin's God's Own Country. But this year's shortlist is dominated by non-fiction, with Henry Hitchings' history of English, The Secret Life of Words, Brian Schofield's Selling Your Father's Bones, which retraces the exodus of the Nez Perce Native American tribe in 1877, and James Palmer's history of Baltic baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, The Bloody White Baron, completing the line-up.

The John Llewellyn Rhys prize is intended to go to the best work of literature - fiction, non-fiction, poetry or drama - by a UK or Commonwealth writer aged 35 or under. Palmer, born in 1981, is this year's youngest shortlisted author.

Chair of judges Henry Sutton, author and books editor of the Daily Mirror, said the six titles picked by judges "could not be stronger, or more thematically or stylistically diverse".

"Each of these works are, in many ways, landmarks," he added. "They stand up."

"It's a diverse shortlist, but they are all men," admitted last year's winner Sarah Hall, author of The Carhullan Army and on this year's panel of judges. "We didn't notice until the final selection had been done. It seems strange but it was only when we had the six on the table that we said 'Oh God, they're all men'." Sutton said that judges had "simply picked the best books".

With more than 80 submissions across all genres for the award, Hall said "it was a real test" to pit poetry against fiction, drama against non-fiction. "It really was tough," she said. "First there has to be a high quality of prose or poetry, of language and expression. Then you look at the subject matter … at what the book is setting out to do, how it succeeds in comparison to the other books."

The prize was founded 65 years ago in honour of John Llewellyn Rhys, a writer who was killed in action during the second world war. Former winners include Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, VS Naipaul and 1984's winner Andrew Motion – the last poet to have won the prize. "There have been some very impressive prize winners over the years," said Hall. "One of the things that struck me when I was looking into the history of the prize is how even-handed it was in the early years between men and women."

Hall and Sutton were joined on the judging panel by author and poet Joolz Denby.

The winner will be revealed on November 24, when he will receive a cheque for £5,000. The shortlisted authors will receive £500 each.

The shortlist in full: The White Tiger by Aravind AdigaThe Broken Word by Adam FouldsThe Secret Life of Words by Henry HitchingsThe Bloody White Baron by James PalmerGod's Own Country by Ross RaisinSelling Your Father's Bones by Brian Schofield